As a weapon against global warming, it sounds so simple and low-tech that it could not possibly work. But the idea of using millions of buckets of whitewash to avert climate catastrophe has won the backing of one of the world’s most influential scientists.
Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.
Speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, Professor Chu said that this approach could have a vast impact. By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.
Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs were painted white, and visible tilted roofs could be painted with “cool-coloured” paints that looked normal, but which absorbed much less heat than conventional dark surfaces. Roads could be lightened to a concrete colour so they would not dazzle drivers in bright sunlight. “I think with flat-type roofs you can’t even see, yes, I think you should regulate,” Professor Chu said.
Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 per cent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 per cent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed. An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning.
Professor Chu said that his thinking had been influenced by Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission, who drove through tough new building rules in the state. Since 2005 California has required all flat roofs on commercial buildings to be white; the measure is being expanded to require cool colours on all residential and pitched roofs.
Dr Rosenfeld is also a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, of which Professor Chu was director. Last year Dr Rosenfeld and two colleagues from the laboratory, Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon, calculated that changing surface colours in 100 of the world’s largest cities could save the equivalent of 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide — about as much as global carbon emissions are expected to rise by over the next decade.
Professor Chu said: “There’s a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, Art Rosenfeld, who’s pushing very hard for a geo-engineering we all believe will be completely benign, and that’s when you have a flat-top roof building, make it white.
“Now, you smile, but he’s done a calculation, and if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly . . . it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years.”
The US needed to increase its investment in clean energy research, he said, citing high-tech industries that spent 10 to 20 per cent of their income on research. The US was spending $1 trillion on generating electricity, but “nothing like” the $100 billion to $200 billion on research that would meet that standard, he said.
Source - The Times
Showing posts with label Steven Chu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steven Chu. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Monday, 15 December 2008
Obama to present new climate change team
President-elect Barack Obama was set Monday to name his energy and environmental chiefs and vow a new dawn for US leadership against climate change after eight years of Republican "denial."
After talks with his national security team, Obama was to name more cabinet lieutenants at a news conference where he was also facing questions over Illinois's scandal-hit governor.
Obama's transition team said the press conference in Chicago would "discuss the nation's energy and environmental future."
Obama was reportedly to nominate Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his energy secretary, placing the expert in renewable energy on the frontlines of climate change policy.
Joining Chu in Obama's new team was expected to be Lisa Jackson, chief of staff to the New Jersey governor, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Obama was further to announce that Carol Browner, who served as EPA administrator under president Bill Clinton, would become the White House "climate czar" overseeing the battle against global warming.
And Nancy Sutley, a senior adviser to Obama's transition team, was expected to be named chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Last week, after a meeting with former vice president Al Gore, Obama said the "time for denial is over" on climate change.
"We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security, and it has to be dealt with in a serious way," he said.
"That is what I intend my administration to do."
Despite an economic recession hitting the United States, Obama is promising to unwind the environmental policies of President George W. Bush, whose refusal to ratify the Kyoto pact on climate change disgusted green campaigners.
Chu, a scientist and Washington outsider, won his Nobel in 1997. Since 2004 he has been running the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, which has a budget of 645 million dollars and a staff of 4,000.
As energy secretary, Chu is expected to lead Obama's ambitious agenda to generate 2.5 million new jobs through "green" and new technologies aimed at making America more energy efficient and less reliant on foreign oil.
Jackson, who trained as a chemical engineer, is likely to restore teeth to the EPA, which during the Bush administration saw its funding slashed, scientific findings censored, and enforcement efforts downplayed.
In one notorious example, the EPA backed off a finding that said climate change was a risk to public welfare. The findings would have led to the nation's first mandatory global-warming regulations.
Despite the costs to industry as the US recession bites, Obama has promised to set caps on domestic emissions of greenhouse gases and reposition the United States in the vanguard of international action.
At UN climate talks in Poland last week, many delegates were delighted at the passing of the Bush administration as the international community attempts to craft a successor to the Kyoto pact.
"This climate conference will go down in history as the retirement party for the Flat Earth Society of the United States of America," said Edward Markey, the senior lawmaker on climate change issues in the House of Representatives.
But analysts also warn against over-expectations. Obama's room to manoeuvre may be limited by the US recession and also the limited time before the deadline of December 2009 for completing a new UN climate treaty.
Source - terra daily
After talks with his national security team, Obama was to name more cabinet lieutenants at a news conference where he was also facing questions over Illinois's scandal-hit governor.
Obama's transition team said the press conference in Chicago would "discuss the nation's energy and environmental future."
Obama was reportedly to nominate Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his energy secretary, placing the expert in renewable energy on the frontlines of climate change policy.
Joining Chu in Obama's new team was expected to be Lisa Jackson, chief of staff to the New Jersey governor, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Obama was further to announce that Carol Browner, who served as EPA administrator under president Bill Clinton, would become the White House "climate czar" overseeing the battle against global warming.
And Nancy Sutley, a senior adviser to Obama's transition team, was expected to be named chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Last week, after a meeting with former vice president Al Gore, Obama said the "time for denial is over" on climate change.
"We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security, and it has to be dealt with in a serious way," he said.
"That is what I intend my administration to do."
Despite an economic recession hitting the United States, Obama is promising to unwind the environmental policies of President George W. Bush, whose refusal to ratify the Kyoto pact on climate change disgusted green campaigners.
Chu, a scientist and Washington outsider, won his Nobel in 1997. Since 2004 he has been running the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, which has a budget of 645 million dollars and a staff of 4,000.
As energy secretary, Chu is expected to lead Obama's ambitious agenda to generate 2.5 million new jobs through "green" and new technologies aimed at making America more energy efficient and less reliant on foreign oil.
Jackson, who trained as a chemical engineer, is likely to restore teeth to the EPA, which during the Bush administration saw its funding slashed, scientific findings censored, and enforcement efforts downplayed.
In one notorious example, the EPA backed off a finding that said climate change was a risk to public welfare. The findings would have led to the nation's first mandatory global-warming regulations.
Despite the costs to industry as the US recession bites, Obama has promised to set caps on domestic emissions of greenhouse gases and reposition the United States in the vanguard of international action.
At UN climate talks in Poland last week, many delegates were delighted at the passing of the Bush administration as the international community attempts to craft a successor to the Kyoto pact.
"This climate conference will go down in history as the retirement party for the Flat Earth Society of the United States of America," said Edward Markey, the senior lawmaker on climate change issues in the House of Representatives.
But analysts also warn against over-expectations. Obama's room to manoeuvre may be limited by the US recession and also the limited time before the deadline of December 2009 for completing a new UN climate treaty.
Source - terra daily
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